ends where it comes out of the base and it cracked the tubing there too.

Husband does not believe that there is mercury in these things. Was swinging it around and turning it upside down to look at it. I got a paper plate under it. I don't see anything coming out onto the plate, though.

I forget how to dispose of these things. Can't just trash them, I am pretty sure.

Also have you ever had this happen? It smells SO bad. We were running around the house looking to see what electronic thing was on fire. Pretty scary!

Be careful with them - the tube is full of horrible substances. You're supposed to "dispose" of them like used computer equipment - some bulb makers give you a box to send it back to them in. I'm keeping them in a box for now until I find a place to send them for disposal.

Scorching at the base of the tube is typical, as is discoloration. I'm uncomfortable with them and tend to use them only in the basement. My wife hates the light they give off.

only there was so much smoke we called the Fire Dept. They checked the whole house, even with scanners , for an electrical fire in the walls. Never looked at the lamp! I found it the next day. Musta been a major arc there.

17. Yeah, fire in the walls was the first thing I thought of. Since this was the bathroom wall

sconce I checked the rocker switch and it did seem like it wasn't quite all the way on or off. However, the smoke smell seems to have cleared and I haven't noticed anything further so we should be all set.

I have a lot of CFLs. I have a fixture in the baffroom that uses 40 watt frosted globe bulbs. I bought eight round CFLs for it. They all died within a year. why?

CFLs are different from incandescents bulbs (IB) in the amount of soldered connections inside. Basically, IBs have two soldered wire joints. One at the side of the base, one at the bottom. CFLs have at least four. A wire from the side base contact and a wire from the center base contact, both go to a circuit board. These are hand soldered. The circuit board itself has some surface mount electronic components that are flow soldered. The hand soldered joints are usually soldered quickly by poor folks poorly trained. The solder joints are often "cold", that is the solder does not flow onto the solder pad on the board or does not permeate the strands of the wire or both. Consequently, the joint is not so much soldered as it is sort of glued, and it is likely to come loose. It's easy to see if an IB solder joints are bad. Not so with a CFL.

Now, I have fixed regular CFLs when they have become intermittent due to cold solder joints. You can pop off the cover and get to the wires. But the globe bulbs are all bonded to the glass glass globe and there is no way inside besides cutting, so if they go bad even a McGiver like me is SOL. QC is a thing of the past when it comes to cheap electronics. The consumer is the test department.

Something I have not heard much about as a result of the conservative demonization of the CFL is that all of those old straight fluorescent bulbs that have been in use since the early days of the 20th century have mercury in them. Remember that scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin when the guys are at the loading dock breaking 48" fluorescent bulbs? Mercury everywhere. The mercury is inside the glass bulb. If that is not broke, there is no problem.

Oh, as you now know since it has been demonstrated to you, CFL electronics have no fuses. If something shorts, it's flame on until somehow the current source is disconnected.

7. Hey, GPV! Get rid of anything electronic that smokes or stinks, and....

...you should be able to Google a place to take them or talk to your waste management company, but the truth is that they are not more dangerous than other fluorescents, like tubes, but they have this big myth of danger associated with them.

Remember that even if the small amounts of mercury end up in a landfill, the amounts of mercury emissions that their use avoids is well worth the trade-off. And the coal fired electricity you might be using to burn incandescent heat bulbs would enter the atmosphere, far worse.

8. Mostly I am worried right now about my kids, who sleep with CFLs right next to their heads in

little reading lamps attached to their headboards. And they leave the lights on all night because they are afraid of the dark.

What if one of those had been the one to go bad and it happened when we were all asleep? Might have started a fire right there by the kids. And trailers are notorious for how fast they burn to a crisp.

I used to feel safe having CFLs going all night in the kids' room because they weren't hot like incandescents, so less fire risk. I considered the breakage issue, informed my kids about it and felt relatively okay over the whole thing, but tonight I am feeling considerably less ok.

It might take some shopping where you are, or checking online, but LED's are da bomb.....growing widely in use and getting cheaper over time. Traffic and pedestrian lights are now almost all LED because they last for 100,000 hours or longer and use less power than CFLs and certainly less than old heat bulbs.

LED lights are just like the CFLs when it comes to the electronics and the quality of the flow and hand soldering. If the location of the area to be lighted is around children, then you want a safe nighlite. Go with a simple incandescent or one of those compact, flat plug-ins like this:

We have had these kind for about 15 years now without a problem. As others have said, get that smokey one the hell out of the house.

Typically, if you have a mercury spill, it's no big deal - clean up the spill itself, and air out your house to get rid of any possible mercury vapors. I don't think you even have a spill, but you might want to air out the house.

Each CFL bulb has enough mercury in it to make a globule about the size of the ball in the tip of a ball-point pen. In other words, not very much. Don't sweat it.

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